


The Three Count

by Sessaware



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: But that has nothing to do with this, Gen, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, I know I put a ship up there but it can be taken as general friendship too, One Shot, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Sora Can't Count, Spoilers - Kingdom Hearts III, Welcome aboard the Pain Train, and all that good stuff, because I love being vague, i guess?, this will make no sense what so ever if you haven't finished KH3 Im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 16:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17665760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sessaware/pseuds/Sessaware
Summary: The Destiny Island trio struggle with what they've lost in the aftermath of the new Keyblade War.Not that they aren't determined to get it back.After all, what's the point of being a trio if they don't add up to three?





	The Three Count

On a cloudless day, Kairi will find the time to paddle over to the small island away from the mainland. It is the place where one, two, three sets of footsteps would once kick up the sand in play, muffled sounds of stomping into the flying grains and further covered by one, two, three different laughs. There had been others there, of course, other children laughing and running on the shore but, although dear, none were so deeply engraved as the others.

The sound of her steps is quiet now, no longer an echo of the two faster and more competitive boys. It feels hollow somehow, but she has to be here because it's the only lead she alone can follow.

Kairi is in a graveyard of keys, dry land and scorching wind. In one moment, she is grabbed by Xemnas. She yells. She blinks. 

Kairi is on that little island she calls home, sitting on the paopu tree like she never left and next to her is a boy she knows better than she knows herself. There are friends farther along the shore, most she has known only a short while but among them is one she knows just as well as the boy next to her.

The sun is setting.

She can see the light stream through his skin and it really isn't supposed to do that. 

The more it sinks, the faster he fades, or maybe quicker, but it's hard to be sure through eyes squeezed shut with tears. The spot next to her is cold. Moments after, she feels a hand on her shoulder as Riku, no longer with the others, leans against the tree so familiarly she almost can't take it. Shadows stretch behind them, long in the evening; one, two, there is no three.

It is no longer the past, although it hasn't been much further from it. A few months. Kairi will find the time on a cloudless day to watch the sunset from her spot on the paopu tree because that is the last time she could remember.

As he had faded away, so then had her memory of the time within a blink. A ground more reflective than the sea, her skin more translucent than glass. A smile that pulled her pieces back together and brought her home. Somehow she knows that's where he is, where he's waiting, and if she could just remember it clearly perhaps it would make it all the easier to get to him. 

She'd promised to keep him safe.

Failing that, she can at least promise to bring Sora home.

\---

Riku hasn't been back to that island since Sora disappeared. He meets Kairi on the mainland when they speak, when they plan, when he wishes her well with a wave as she gets in her small boat and heads to the other shore. It's hard to even look at it from the docks because everything about it seems so fundamentally wrong. Like the island they'd spent their childhood on shouldn't even exist if Sora isn't there to gallivant all over it with a big grin and a loud laugh and carefree sprints between the one, two, three of them. 

He knows why Kairi goes and he hopes everyday that it pans out. He knows how upset she is, how she blames herself. Riku knows that feeling all too well.

It is a daily struggle to keep the thoughts, the regret, away; why had he let Sora go, why did he let him go alone, why hadn't he been able to protect Kairi in the first place, why couldn't he protect Sora now?

It's useless to think about and, more than that, it would hurt them to know if he believed that. 

He has long accepted the darkness in his heart but he is far from letting it rule him again. 

He clings to the light, the warmth in his heart that Sora has left there and it's worth the constant effort to do so because it's there he can feel that Sora's heart still persists, bright and stubborn and kind. In one, two, almost three years of trials, that belief in Sora that exists in his core is still unshakable even at his lowest when he actively tried to deny it.

He is not the only one who feels this; many of their friends do, but that is where the map starts and stops.

Sora is out there, but there isn't a single path to follow as to where.

He knows Sora won't mind too much, goodness knows he's forgiven more from him, but Riku has commandeered the gummi ship. If he can find some glimmer, some speck of a long dispersed vapor trail left from Sora's heart in this impossibly wide and vast sea of worlds, then Riku can find him. 

It doesn't matter how long it takes. 

Sitting in the pilot's seat of the ship, now parked in an empty clearing on the mainland, Riku brings up the map of worlds he's seen so many times. Kairi sits behind him, helping him mark which ones have been dead ends and which are still unsearched. This is how it's been since that day, the places for those he loves taken in the seats of the gummi ship; one, two, there is no three.

But there will be.


End file.
